Tag: Florida State football

Paul Finebaum calls Florida State ‘the biggest falloff in college football history’ this season

Finebaum rips Florida State for its historic fall off.

Florida State’s 2024 season has been a steep and painful decline from its championship-winning form in 2023.

The Seminoles, once ranked in the preseason top 10, fell to 1-9 after a staggering 52-3 loss to Notre Dame. Coach Mike Norvell voiced his disappointment, acknowledging how far the team had fallen from expectations: “This is not the result we expected… it’s a season full of results that make us sick.” With only two games left, the best they can achieve is a three-win season—a low they haven’t reached since 1975 in a full season.

ESPN’s Paul Finebaum called this fall “the biggest falloff in college football history,” noting how extraordinary it is for a top-10 team to spiral this dramatically. Florida State’s downturn contrasts even more sharply given that Michigan, the defending national champion, has struggled too but is managing a 5-5 record despite losing head coach Jim Harbaugh to the NFL. Finebaum stressed that Norvell’s performance fell far below expectations: “There’s no excuse for that… he’s lost all the goodwill he had from a year ago.”

In a bid to turn things around, Norvell took drastic measures, firing three key staff members: offensive coordinator Alex Atkins, defensive coordinator Adam Fuller, and wide receivers coach Ron Dugans. This shake-up underscores his intent to reconfigure the program for the future. Following a bye week, Florida State faces Charleston Southern and then hosts rival Florida in hopes of salvaging something positive to close out an otherwise bitter season.

Florida State finally avoids a disaster by turning a QB sneak into a 42-yard gain

Florida State avoided its season of doom completely coming off the rails with this wild QB sneak.

Florida State fans likely breathed a sigh of relief after a seemingly routine quarterback sneak nearly unraveled in the worst way possible.

FSU’s season has been so bad that nothing is seemingly safe. Just last week, they executed what might have been the ugliest field goal I’ve ever seen. And this week, they nearly botched a quarterback sneak. I shouldn’t be surprised, but yet, somehow, I still am.

Early in the second quarter against Miami, FSU wanted to go for it on fourth-and-one. The exchange between the center and quarterback Luke Kromenhoek was bobbled, but somehow — football gods were seemingly showing mercy — Kromenhoek squeezed out of the pile of players and hit a 42-yard scamper. INCREDIBLE.

(Feature image courtesy of ESPN)

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2025 4-star WR and Florida State commit will attend Texas A&M vs. LSU

Add another key 2025 prospect to Texas A&M’s long visitors list for Saturday’s LSU matchup

Texas A&M’s critical Week 9 home matchup vs. 8th-ranked LSU also poses another opportunity to host recruiting prospects from the 2025, 2026, and 2027 recruiting classes inside what will be a blackout in a close-to-sold-out Kyle Field.

Needing to add at least one or two more wide receiver prospects to join 4-star Kelshaun Johnson and 3-star Tristan Norman in the cycle, Rival recruiting insider Landyn Rosow has gotten word that 2025 4-star WR CJ Wiley, who is currently committed to Florida State, will also make his way to College Station on Saturday night.

Standing at 6-4 and nearly 200 pounds, Wiley is coincidentally compared to current Texas A&M junior wide receiver Noah Thomas due to both players’ length and large catch radius while possessing the athleticism and downfield speed to produce explosive plays in the passing game.

While Florida State continues to struggle this season, it’s not surprising that current commits are at least looking at their options before signing day. Listed on 247Sports 2025 “Freaks list,” Wiley is coming off his best season during his 2023 junior campaign, recording 1,473 receiving yards and 14 touchdowns and a 21.7 yard per reception mark.

According to 247Sports, Wiley is currently positioned as the 134th-ranked prospect in the 2025 class, the 18th-ranked wide receiver prospect, and the 19th-ranked prospect in Georgia.

Texas A&M will host LSU at home on Saturday, Oct. 26th, at 6:30 p.m. CT. The game will air on ABC.

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Florida State’s lost season was encapsulated by a disastrous failed field goal

Things are just going from bad to worse for Florida State.

It’s already a lost season for Florida State.

After going 13-0 to start last season and being snubbed in the most controversial decision of the College Football Playoff era, it’s been a brutal start with a new-look roster. FSU is 1-5 on the year and trying to arrest the slide on the road against Duke, and early in the game, things were pretty rough.

Attempting a field goal in the first quarter trying to expand a 3-0 lead, about everything that could have gone wrong did. The snap was a bit high, and the holder didn’t give Florida State kicker Ryan Fitzgerald a chance as the ball went into the back of an offensive lineman.

https://twitter.com/cjzero/status/1847426261972582820

The Blue Devils proceeded to take advantage of the momentum and jump out to a 17-3 lead after a pick-six and a fumble that led to a touchdown.

It’s the perfect encapsulation of a season that has gone much worse than any FSU fan expected before the season, and it seems things aren’t getting better anytime soon.

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Former Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher rants about ‘utterly ridiculous’ CFB ‘cheating’

“We need revenue sharing. We need a salary cap for all schools… The tampering that other schools do with players, is utterly ridiculous.”

The media tour of former Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher has been non-stop this season and it continued last week with a rant about cheating in college football.

“College football is — I complain about it, it’s still the greatest game. As much as I love NFL, and I’m crazy about it, and I respect it, but college football, man, you don’t know — 18, 22 teams, you don’t know what you’re going to get. I mean, it’s still so — I love college basketball, all those things, I love all college sports, but college football man, we need a commissioner. We need revenue sharing. We need a salary cap, for all schools, and if you’re caught — and the other part of this, the tampering that other schools do with players, is utterly ridiculous,” Fisher proclaimed on Oct. 1. “I mean, the big schools are going and getting players constantly from other schools, and it’s being done illegally. Those guys are developing players, and all of a sudden their guys, you know, that team shouldn’t have an advantage, financially, to be able to take care of a guy that another school doesn’t, and it’s wrong.

“I’ve had multiple discussions with players I’ve had, teams calling them and offering money. ‘I’ve got NIL, I’ve got this offer here, I’ve got this,’ and you’ve got to sit down with them, their parents and go through it all. Power 4, within our own league, with the things that go on. I thought, really, when NIL came in, we thought it would be good, because some of this — there were teams that were doing NIL before NIL was popular, OK? I thought NIL would at least make it fair, take the cheating out of ball. It’s made it worse.”

Fisher appears on Off Campus with EJ Manuel and Jacob Hester every Tuesday from 3-6 p.m. on SiriusXM’s College Sports channel.

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Instant Analysis: Clemson wins fourth straight, but missed opportunities stand out

What you need to know from Clemson’s win over Florida State.

The Clemson Tigers won their fourth straight game Saturday night by defeating the Florida State Seminoles, 29-13, in Tallahassee.

Dabo Swinney passed Bobby Bowden for most wins as head coach at an ACC program — on a field named after the legendary Seminoles coach and personal friend to Swinney. Clemson’s victory was the 174th of Swinney’s career. It was also the Tigers’ eighth win against FSU in the series’ last nine meetings.

The fact that Swinney and Clemson would win the game was pretty much cemented from the moment the Tigers (4-1) took a 17-0 lead facing an anemic Florida State (1-5) offense after the first quarter.

Quarterback Cade Klubnik led two impressive first-quarter touchdown drives. He hit Antonio Williams for an incredible 57-yard touchdown catch that made it 10-0, then hit freshman T.J. Moore for a 23-yard touchdown with just 2 seconds left in the opening quarter.

But the Tigers failed to finish drives for the rest of the night. They settled for seven straight field goal attempts in the red zone from kicker Nolan Hauser, who made five of them with two being blocked.

The inability to finish drives was a sore enough point for Swinney, who lamented as much to ESPN sideline reporter Quint Kessenich at the start of the fourth quarter.

Clemson would finish the night by dominating Florida State in everything that ultimately mattered to the game’s outcome. The Tigers out-gained the ‘Noles in total yards, 500 to 250; indeed, 52 of FSU’s yards came on a final, stat-padding possession. The Tigers’ defense allowed just 22 rushing yards all night.

Klubnik was 19-of-33 for 235 yards through the air and tailback Phil Mafah added 154 yards on the ground on 22 carries (6.2 AVG).

Clemson also committed fewer penalties (three) than Florida State (seven), though the game was relatively laundry-free.

The Tigers managed to get a road win, and that’s more than several Top 25 teams with hopes of reaching the College Football Playoff — Alabama,  Tennessee, Missouri, USC and Michigan — can say for Week 6. But the Tigers also never flashed a true killer instinct.

When Seminoles quarterback Brock Glenn led a 15-play, 74-yard scoring drive that ended with a 12-yard touchdown pass to Ja’Khi Douglas with 9:36 still to play in regulation, Florida State was a 2-point conversion shy of making it a one-score game.

That never happened, and Clemson would tack on two more field goals to allow itself some breathing room. Speaking of field goals, the two blocked kicks came on weak protection from the left side of the offensive line. That’s something else the Tigers will need to clean up.

Going forward, the Tigers may not be able to win games by committing some of these mistakes. That’s especially true when the competition stiffens in November and December.

Swinney said this week that good teams win at home and great teams win on the road. To that end, Clemson is now 1-0 on the road in ACC play. But greatness also comes in the form of being able to bury teams that simply don’t match the Tigers’ skill set.

NEXT UP

Clemson will face Wake Forest in Winston-Salem next Saturday at noon ET. The game will be televised on ESPN.

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ESPN graphic viciously summed up the current condition of Florida State football

ESPN didn’t hold back with this Florida State graphic.

Calling Florida State’s 2024 college football season a disaster so far would be a massive understatement.

The team that was supposed to contend for the ACC title entered Week 6’s game against No. 15 Clemson with a 1-4 record, 1-3 in conference play, with its only win being a 14-9 victory over Cal. As a result, Florida State has become the butt of a lot of jokes this year and is catching jabs and slights from all over the college football world, including ESPN.

With an absolutely vicious graphic at the bottom of the screen during the Clemson game, ESPN threw a hilarious insult (though, an accurate one) at Florida State. Talking about what’s at stake for FSU with a win against the Tigers, the graphic read:

“Restores hope and respect”

(ESPN)

It might take a little more than a win over Clemson for Florida State to get some respect back, but it would definitely offer a glimmer of hope for the rest of the season.

At the time of publishing, Clemson was winning, 23-7.

UPDATE: Florida State lost, 29-13, and did not restore hope or respect.

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Tigers hoping recent history in Clemson-Florida State rivalry holds

Clemson will be looking for its fourth straight win at Doak Campbell Stadium when the Tigers visit Tallahassee on Saturday.

From 1992-2014, the Clemson Tigers posted only one win at Doak Campbell Stadium against the Florida State Seminoles. On Saturday, they’ll be searching for their fourth straight victory in Tallahassee.

Much like the recent history of the rivalry, which has seen the Tigers win seven of the last eight meetings with the Seminoles, Clemson and Florida State are two programs that are going in opposite directions heading into their Week 6 showdown.

The Tigers (3-1) have won three straight games since opening the year with a loss to preseason No. 1 Georgia and have outscored opponents by an average of 32 points in that span. Clemson is ranked No. 14 in this week’s US LBM Coaches Poll.

As for Florida State, everything that could have gone wrong for Mike Norvell’s team has. After going 13-0 last season to win the ACC, the Seminoles are 1-4 after last Saturday’s 42-16 loss at SMU.

Former Clemson quarterback DJ Uiagalelei has not been what Seminoles fans had hoped for after transferring from Oregon State. Uiagalelei will miss Saturday’s game with a broken finger as Norvell turns to backup QB Brock Glenn, who started last year’s ACC Championship Game against Louisville.

The problems don’t begin and end at quarterback, though. The Seminoles’ defense gave up 458 yards to SMU in their most lopsided regular season loss since the 2020 season, Norvell’s first with the team. FSU has also struggled up front along the offensive line and not had many explosive plays or consistency from their running backs.

None of that matters to Dabo Swinney, who will be in his 16th game as a head coach in the Clemson-FSU rivalry this Saturday when the Tigers visit Tallahassee for a 7 p.m. ET kickoff. The game will be televised on ESPN.

“Florida State is always a really tough place to play,” Swinney said this week. “Their fans do a great job. There’s always a ton of energy down there. It’s Clemson-Florida State. Lot of well-documented history with this matchup. It doesn’t matter what the records are. None of that matters. There’s good players on both sides. Florida State’s got a bunch of guys that will be playing on Sunday.”

Swinney has seen his fair share of highlights and lowlights in the Clemson-FSU series, beginning with his first visit to Tallahassee as a member of Tommy Bowden’s coaching staff in 2004.

His first experience at Doak Campbell Stadium wasn’t a pleasant one. Florida State won, 41-22, with the Tigers in the midst of a four-game September losing streak.

“’04 was my first experience down there,” Swinney recalled. “I’d never been down there. We actually beat them in ’03. That’s probably why I’m still standing at this podium. I’m probably living in Boise or something if we’d have lost that game that year.”

A few years later in 2006, Clemson scored a 27-20 upset victory over the ninth-ranked ‘Noles in Tallahassee in Week 3, one week after falling 34-33 at Boston College in overtime.

Swinney lost in his first trip to Tallahassee as head coach in 2008 after replacing Tommy Bowden earlier in the season. Three more losses at Doak Campbell would follow until the Tigers won there in 2016.

In that game, Clemson got out to a 14-0 lead in the first quarter before needing a 17-point fourth quarter to outlast Florida State, 37-34, and keep the Tigers’ unbeaten season alive.

“The ’16 game down there, Jordan Leggett in the fourth quarter was awesome,” Swinney said of the tight end’s 34-yard game-winning touchdown catch with two minutes remaining. “We were on the right side. We were down and had to rally. That was a big-time win. So, we’ve had a lot of great moments for sure.

“I thought our win down there in ’22 was big. Obviously that helped us win the ACC Championship. DJ had a great game in that game.”

With a win Saturday, Swinney would become the winningest coach at an ACC program and surpass Bobby Bowden with his 174th career victory.

“Got a lot of good memories and got some bad ones, too,” Swinney said of the Clemson-Florida State rivalry. “But it’s a great series and Florida State has been a great opponent for a long time.”

Florida State leads the all-time series, 21-15. A win by Clemson would give the Tigers eight victories in their last nine games against FSU.

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USA TODAY Sports experts offer predictions on Clemson vs Florida State

Here’s who USA TODAY Sports experts think will win Saturday’s game between Clemson and Florida State.

The Clemson Tigers will head to Tallahassee this Saturday to renew their annual rivalry with the Florida State Seminoles in what will be the first true road game for Dabo Swinney’s team in 2024.

The Tigers (3-1) are ranked No. 14 in this week’s US LBM Coaches Poll after winning their last three games, including last Saturday’s 40-14 victory over the Stanford Cardinal in Death Valley.

Florida State (1-4) is unranked amid one of the worst starts in Seminoles history. They began the year 0-3 before holding off ACC newcomer California. Against another ACC newbie last week (the SMU Mustangs), the ‘Noles were routed 42-16 in Dallas.

In their weekly college football predictions released Thursday, the six-member panel of Dan Wolken, Paul Myerberg, Eddie Timanus, Scooby Axson, Jordan Mendoza and Erick Smith all predicted the Tigers to win Saturday’s game against Florida State.

Clemson coach Dabo Swinney was asked this week if he was surprised by the Seminoles’ 1-4 start. Swinney said Florida State had been competitive in most every game and that their competition deserved credit for fielding good teams, as well.

“Football’s hard. It’s a hard game, it really is,” Swinney offered. “A few plays here and there can affect the psyche of a team, the confidence of a team. A couple of plays go your way and next thing you know, it’s just different.”

“You look at a couple of these games and they’re right there,” Swinney continued. “So, you just have to keep playing. If you do this long enough, you’re going to have a year along the way where… crazy things can happen. You’ve just got to play the next game and keep going. I think everybody is surprised by what their record is, but you’ve also got to give the other teams some credit.”

Kickoff for Saturday’s game between Clemson and Florida State is set for 7 p.m. ET. The game can be seen on ESPN.

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‘He’s still the best’: Dabo Swinney recalls Bobby Bowden with historic coaching milestone in sight

Dabo Swinney talks about the friendship he had with the late Bobby Bowden.

With 173 career victories, Dabo Swinney is one shy of the most wins recorded by a head coach at an ACC program.

A win Saturday by the Clemson Tigers means that Swinney would pass Bobby Bowden on that list. Perhaps it’s only fitting that Swinney’s first chance to pass Bowden will come at the stadium that bears the name of the legendary coach and Swinney’s friend.

Swinney has always spoken highly of Bowden, the revered former Florida State Seminoles coach who passed away in 2021 at the age of 91. And with Clemson set to face FSU at Bobby Bowden Field at Doak Campbell Stadium in Week 6, Swinney had a chance to reflect on his memories of Bowden at his weekly Tuesday press conference.

When Swinney was named interim coach at Clemson in 2008, one of the first calls he received was from Bowden, whose son (Tommy Bowden) Swinney had replaced as coach.

“We had just got our first win, at Boston College,” Swinney recalled. “That was surreal because obviously I’m an interim coach. Coach Bowden called me the night of the (first interim win) and said, ‘All the Bowdens are pullin’ for ya.'”

When Clemson and Florida State met a week later, it was a 41-27 Seminoles victory at Doak Campbell Stadium. But that isn’t what Swinney remembers most about that afternoon in Tallahassee.

“I just remember being kind of nervous before the game. I mean, you’ve got to go meet Bobby Bowden,” Swinney said. “Obviously, I knew him, but I’d never been in this role, and he was amazing. He was so gracious and just kind. I had one career win — one. It was just this surreal moment of, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be the coach here in three weeks.’

“It was a negative outcome on the scoreboard,” Swinney said of that November 2008 game vs. FSU. “But one of those moments I’ll never forget just because of how he made me feel in what could have been an awkward situation. That’s just a credit to who he was. I think that was probably one of his gifts. He had the ability to just make everybody feel good.”

RELATED: Clemson-Florida State rivalry will feature familiar TV broadcast crew

Swinney and Bowden would meet one more time as opposing head coaches. In one of Bowden’s final games as Florida State’s coach, Clemson defeated the ‘Noles 40-24 in Death Valley in November 2009. The Tigers won their division and finished 9-5 that year.

Fast forward 15 years, and Swinney will be seeking his 174th victory. When a reporter noted that Swinney had a chance to surpass Bowden’s record at the field named after the late Seminoles coach, Swinney said that he thought Bowden would be “fine” with it.

“Honestly, if Bobby Bowden could, poof, pop down here with his hat on, he’d probably smile,” Swinney said, noting that both men are from Birmingham. “He went to Woodlawn High, my mom went to Woodlawn High. We were friends so, I don’t know, if God blesses us and that happens, I think Coach Bowden would be fine (with it).

“I’ve got a great letter in my office. He kind of claims me as one of his own. He said, ‘I hope that doesn’t offend you’ is kind of how he wrote in the letter. ‘I just see you as one of my own.’ And so, I think that’s one of the greatest compliments that I’ve ever gotten. I’ve got voicemails from him, even to this day, that I’ve kept long after he was done (coaching) where he would just call to encourage me.

“He was a big letter-writer. Probably a lot of people out there that’s got some letter from Bobby Bowden, and I’ve got a couple of them framed that mean a lot to me where he took the time to encourage me over the years. It may happen and I may get the record, but Bobby Bowden, he’s still the best.”

Kickoff for Saturday’s Clemson-Florida State matchup is set for 7 p.m. ET. The game can be seen on ESPN.

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